by On Friday, racing returns to Wincanton when three-time Gold Cup winner Best Mate trainer Henrietta Knight makes her first runner since ‘retiring’ to nurse husband Terry Biddlecome. lives in 2012.
Meanwhile Knight has lost his sister Cici and her husband Cici, Lord Vestey, notable owners when she was first training, and Cici Vestey’s silks will be on Ballywalter, owned by Knight’s niece Mary.
“It will be a family business,” she says. “It will be really exciting to see my sister’s colors on my first runner.”
She doesn’t dwell on that, however, but instead has some fears before she returns to the training steps. “I have really cold feet about my first runner this time,” she says. “When I started in 1989 my first runner was a winner. So much has been written since I announced my return, everyone is watching and expecting it. Back then we went up to Bangor with a pointer that dropped more often than not and nobody expected anything.
“Hopefully he will run well, he is a nice horse but not a star of the future although we will have fun with him. He’s not very fast, he won the Irish point-to-point about nine weeks ago but the mud will be fine with him.”
Knight, 77, returns, she reckons, knowing more about training than when she left after writing The Jumping Game which gave her unprecedented access to 30 trainers to write their methods .
She is also being ‘assisted’ by Brendan Powell, a successful former trainer who spent the last five years helping Joseph O’Brien.
“Brendan is a huge asset,” she says. “He was telling someone he wished he knew what he had learned with Joseph while he was training. It is like the skin of a cat; there are many ways to train a horse and horses respond differently to different methods.
“I don’t think Best Mate would have responded well when he was in a large yard. We molly-coddled him, wrapped him in cotton wool and I’m not sure how he would cope with being one of a number in a big string.”
Even a septuagenarian can dream and if the chances of another Best walking into West Lockinge are slim, she is clear in her aims. “You tell me can lightning strike twice?” she asks rhetorically. “I want a small bunch of horses that can win races, that’s an advantage if a good one comes out of the pack.
“If it’s good enough to run at the Cheltenham Festival that’s a double bonus and if it’s good enough for first place, that’s a triple bonus. I would love to walk across that paddock with a winner again – not a feeling you can explain or describe.
“Of course we have to win races and pay for it. We’ve got some nice four-year-olds who will win in the spring but we’re a bit short on older horses and now’s not the time to get them, it’s the end of the season.”
At a time of great uncertainty in the sport, you can take the attitude that she is mad or take your hat off to her to get back in.
“I could carry on doing what I was doing, basically running a linen yard and teaching other people’s horses to jump,” she continues. “I like a busy, bustling yard but I was sending the horses back and they were winning for other people. You don’t see through it, someone else does. There is some satisfaction with that but I want to continue with them.”
There’s a lot of superstition in racing – many trainers won’t wear a green to the races – but for the first time ever, Knight has taken idiosyncrasy to a new level and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon.
“If you enter a house through one door you must leave by that door,” she said. “You must never go over the stairs, if you leave and forget something and go back into the house you must sit down before you leave again. I’m not keen on a single cat, I hate black cats crossing the road, a cat in the house is a sign of death. But I don’t mind walking under a ladder, 13 or green.
“It was written when Best Mate was running in the Gold Cup that I would hide in the cottage but that was a myth. I want to look or walk away sometimes but because I saw all his first Gold Cup in 2002, I had to watch them all and do everything the same.
“I used to back every other horse in the race except Best Mate too because I wanted to get the satisfaction out of him if he was beaten. That cost me £800-£900 a year!
“The biggest one though is grass and straw. Seeing a load of hay on the way to the races is very lucky but the grass thing is terrible. With straw you draw, with grass you pay. Before the 2004 Gold Cup I got the straw merchant to deliver to the yard that morning!”
There is not much that Knight has not done in his 76 years; from being a pleasure deb’s, getting a teaching degree from Oxford (she is a B.Ed) teaching history and biology at the local girls’ convent school, to finishing 12th at the three day Badminton event to breeding prize winning conamara and training. the only Arkle horse to win three Gold Cups.
As a friend of royalty, for 11 years on the trot the late Queen Mother invited her to the Royal Lodge for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth weekend in July. “I’m not really a celebrity so I started worrying about it from about three weeks on,” she recalls.
“The bath would be run for you, you would have breakfast in bed and when you arrived your suitcase would be taken out for you to be unpacked by a maid. I was so worried about someone else unpacking for me that I would go to M&S every year before I went to buy new underwear to make sure it was spotless! But she was a great host and I loved talking about racing and life with her.”
Henrietta Knight’s racing life part II is likely to offer as many stories as winners. Terry Biddlecome, she is sure, would have approved. “He hated it when I brought the license in to take care of him,” she says.
